1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method and system for implementing mail-based application and document delivery.
2. Related Art
The Internet requires a number of protocols to complement each other. The protocols form a bidirectional value chain, wherein each layer of the value chain obtains service from the layer below or above while providing service to the layer above or below, depending on the direction of flow of service. The division of protocols among the layers is more related to the working group's philosophy of division of work, concern over loss of data, etc; otherwise they perform essentially the same function, which is to deliver generally error-free data across the network. Popularly used suites of networking protocols, e.g., Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) or Open System Interconnect (OSI), describe the topmost layer as the application layer. Various business applications are deployed on top of the application layer. Most prominent among the application layer protocols is HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is the de facto standard for carrying most of the document and application delivery in the Internet. The application layer protocol, HTTP, sometimes mimics a transport layer protocol (which is the layer immediately below the application layer) in order to transport HTTP-encoded data pertaining to business applications, which behavior of HTTP is referred to as tunneling. Wihle HTTP, with or without tunneling, has monopolized the Internet, any failure on part of HTTP will leave the world of distributed computing hapless.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system to mitigate the effect of a HTTP failure.